10.04.09

Summary: The Community patent keeps marching, Jean-Philippe Courtois lobbies for the Lisbon Treaty, and Microsoft brings intellectual monopolies to The League of Arab States

THE FFII has been warning for well over a year now that unification was means for legalising software patents in Europe. Fingers were pointing at Commissioner McCreevy, who constantly brings up the Community patent [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Axel H. Horns has this update about the Community patent, which remains a big threat to Free software in this continent.

It should not be overlooked that the entire project of an enhanced patent system in Europe is currently set on hold because of the pending referral for the Unified Patent Litigation System to the ECJ.

BUSINESS GROUPS: THE MICROSOFT executive who runs the software company’s business outside of the US and Canada is the latest high-profile business leader to come out in favour of passing the Lisbon Treaty.

Jean-Philippe Courtois, president of Microsoft International, said it was “very important” not just for Ireland but for Europe as a whole that the treaty is ratified.

“We have a shift of power between China, Brazil, the Indias of the world and the US,” said Mr Courtois. “Europe needs to step up both economically speaking and politically speaking. That treaty has to be clearly embodied and move on with all the citizens in Europe.”

The League of Arab States, Microsoft Corp. and Khasawneh & Associates (a member of KSLG) today announced the launch of the Arab Intellectual Property Centre, an online portal which will provide a central hub for best practice sharing and legal resources on intellectual property in the Arab region.

Ten claims from the Acacia Research Streaming Media Patent have been invalidated by the U.S.District Court for the Northern District of California. The Court invalidated the remaining claims that had been asserted in the litigation, after several others had been dropped from the suit by Acacia. EFF was not involved in the case, which was brought by Acacia against leading satellite and cable companies, Echostar, DirectTV, Time Warner Cable and CSC Holdings, Inc. Similar claims in related patents will also be invalid under the Court’s analysis.

The lunacy of the EPO with its patent maximalism will likely go unchecked (and uncorrected) if Battistelli gets his way and turns the EPO into another SIPO (Croatian in the human rights sense and Chinese in the quality sense)

Another long installment in a multi-part series about UPC at times of post-truth Battistelli-led EPO, which pays the media to repeat the lies and pretend that the UPC is inevitable so as to compel politicians to welcome it regardless of desirability and practicability

Implementing yet more of his terrible ideas and so-called 'reforms', Battistelli seems to be racing to the bottom of everything (patent quality, staff experience, labour rights, working conditions, access to justice etc.)

"Good for trolls" is a good way to sum up the Unitary Patent, which would give litigators plenty of business (defendants and plaintiffs, plus commissions on high claims of damages) if it ever became a reality

Microsoft's continued fascination with and participation in the effort to undermine Alice so as to make software patents, which the company uses to blackmail GNU/Linux vendors, widely acceptable and applicable again